Tuesday, October 18, 2011

For those of you who follow us both on Twitter, you may have noticed that Kiora and I were talking a while back about further RKS-related doujinshi works. Eventually, Kiora sent me a link to a blog post containing the latest page in his AfterStory tale. For those of you not in the know, the original AfterStory… story has Zorne seeking revenge against RKS for the death of her father while Iris attempts redemption by allowing Spiritia to kill her. Freudia appears to be overcome by Zorne’s overwhelming power, and Iris asks Tia to end her life.

Here’s the first page of the sequel. As far as I can tell, Spiritia is a very forgiving lady and doesn’t comply with Iris’s request. However, who knows what sort of things may be going on behind the scenes with Freudia and Zorne, so here’s hoping that we’ll see some serious action in the future!

If you want to keep up with this stuff or just see what Kiora’s up to on a normal basis, then you should follow him on Twitter and on his blog. I’m sure we’ll be seeing further updates. You’ll probably see them faster than you would here, since I’m really bad at keeping up this blog and RKS news and all of that.

There’ve been some complications on my end, so I can’t say for sure when you’ll be seeing the next “WOMI’s Latest Update” translation post. As a matter of fact, if anyone can read and write Japanese, I could probably use your help with some things here at Schwer and Schwer Alike, so please post a comment or drop me a line. You’d be a huge help. Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Those of you who have been following the Darkside Translations website (and I'm assuming that's maybe three of you), you probably know that, back in August, we hosted a series of panels on Neon Genesis Evangelion at Montreal Otakuthon. A little while before that, I got in touch with an aspiring young voice actress by the name of Amanda Lee. Long story short: I was really impressed with her English rendition of "Beautiful World" (for those of you who don't know, that's the ending theme to Rebuild of Evangelion), and she was honored that I wanted to use her performance as the ending theme to one of our panels.

The panels themselves were a huge success, and the songs we used were very well-received; I know that for a fact because a lot of people came up to the front of the room at the end asking us to upload them onto YouTube or onto our site, so we've done exactly that, if you haven't heard them before.

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, I got off of work early and remembered that TrickMasterMint was trying to produce an English dub of RKS with the help of Voice Acting Alliance. So, I decided to try and get in touch with Amanda to see if she'd be interested in taking part. At the same time, I remembered something I'd heard in an earlier podcast and decided to give it a shot. So, after sending out a couple of emails, I started translating the spoken dialogue for Spiritia Rosenberg and Freudia Neuwahl into English. When I was finished with that, I went to check my mail - and my jaw hit the floor when I realized I'd gotten a response. I listened to the two MP3s that were attached... and I nearly had a heart attack. Tristan MacAvery, the original voice of Neon Genesis Evangelion's Gendo Ikari, not only wanted to take part in the English dubbing, but he wanted to actively, in his own words, "pimp your game".

OH, YEAH!

Naturally, this was a huge confidence boost. And, over the next few weeks, I was able to get in touch with a good number of professional voice actors. And my luck kept snowballing. Long story short: Amanda said "yes", and a good number of the people I had contacted wanted to take part in the "Blades of the Rose Cross" Project. I've received a couple of amazing auditions, and I have many more on the way.

So, yes, it's official: Rosenkreuzstilette is being dubbed into English. But not just any dub. LadyMiaow's YouTube review of our original English release [in the video description] noted that we could teach professional outfits a thing or two about localization. And our English dub is going to do the same.

As of this recording, Amanda Lee, Tristan MacAvery, and Kira Buckland are officially part of our cast. The first clip I posted was taken from one of the MP3s Tristan had originally sent me, and the second was an excerpt of Kira's delightful audition for the part of Iris. As for the others: Patrick Seitz, the voice of Ragna the Bloodedge from BlazBlue and Count Vlad Tepes Dracula from Castlevania, has expressed interest in taking part. Cristina Vee, who a lot of you know as Noel Vermillion from BlazBlue, Nanoha Takamichi from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and Louise Leblanc de la Valliere from Familiar of Zero, will not only be taking part, but she'll be helping us with the casting and directing. Jennifer Alyx, the voice of Fate Testarossa Harlaown in Nanoha, will be acting alongside Cristina. I should note that none of the voice actors have been cast yet and we're still looking for five or six more voice actresses, so this is far from final.

Alright, enough with the buildup already. I'm sure all of you want to hear them in action right now, don't you? First, a couple of disclaimers, though:

1) These clips were taken from auditions, some of which were recorded without ever having heard the Japanese voices and with little or no direction.

2) I'm not an audiophile, but I'm a very quick study. I've applied a bit of filtering to try and compensate for the MP3 quality loss, and to try and recreate some of the special effects in the Japanese audio track, but I'm still no expert. So, if it ends up sounding like crap: sorry, I'm a newbie at this, so, uh, it's the best I can do.

Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy!

For those of you who dove head-first into this wall of text and didn't notice the underlined heading: this is a transcript of the MP3 at the top of this post. The one in red and blue. Start over and pay attention if you want to hear the voice samples - I'm not gonna transcribe them for ya. That'd kinda defeat the point, y'know.

Welcome!

Where in the world are you? I'm glad you asked! Welcome to Schwer and Schwer Alike, the official English development blog for Rosenkreuzstilette -Blades of the Rose Cross-. "RKS" is a series of indie sidescrollers created by [erka:es] as a loving tribute to old-school gaming. The series caters to the loyal-yet-neglected Megaman fanbase and fills the void created by the cancellation of Megaman Universe and Megaman Legends 3.

Originally a dynamic duo, [erka:es] is now a one-man show run by WOMI, the series' lead artist and character designer. Should you feel so inclined, you can download free trial versions of Rosenkreuzstilette and its sequel, Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel, from the developer's official website. If you like what you see, you can purchase both games, in English, via Steam and Playism .